
Class 5457 

Book : 



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A DISCOURSE 



ON THE DEATH OF 



* Tr '•>*—- 



PRESIDENT LINCOLN 



IN DEDHAM, 



THE REV. SAMUEL B. BABCOCK, 

IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE REQUEST OF A COMMITTEE OF 

CITIZENS. 



Wednesday, April 19, 1865. 



DEDHAM, MASS.: 

PRINTED BY JOHIST COX, Jr. 

18 6 5. 



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A DISCOURSE 



ON THE 



OIL 



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PREACHED IN THE ORTHODOX CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, 
IN DEDHAM, 



THE EEV. SAMUEL B. BABCOCK, 

IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE REQUEST OF A COMMITTEE OF 

CITIZENS. 



/ 



Wednesday, April 19, 1865. 



DEDHAM, MASS.: 
PRINTED BY JOHN COX, Jr. 

18 65. 



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To the Rev. Samuel B. Babcock: 

At a meeting of the Committee of Arrangements of the citizens of Dedham, 
held April 22, 1865— 

Voted, — That the thanks of the Committee be presented to the Rev. Samuel 
B. Babcock, for his able, appropriate and patriotic Discourse, on the occasion 
of the funeral solemnities in honor of the late President of the United States ; 
and that he be solicited to furnish a copy thereof for publication. 

(Signed) I. Cleveland, "1 

Eliphalet Stone, j 
A. B. Galucia, }■ Committee. 
Wm. Bullard, 
L. H. Kingsbury, J 



[Reply.] 

Chestnut Street, April 25, 1865. 
To I. Cleveland, Eliphalet Stone, A. B. Galucia, and others, Esqrs. : 

Gentlemen, — Your kind note, expressing approval of my poor labors on the 
19th inst., (a historical day in the annals of our land, as the anniversary of 
the blood shed at Lexington in 1775, at Baltimore in 1861, and of the burial 
of Abraham Lincoln,) is received, and in reply to your courteous request, I 
place the manuscript in your hands. 

Yours, very truly, 

Samuel B. Babcock. 



DISCOURSE. 



2 Sam. 19th, 2d: "The victory that day was turned 

INTO MOURNING." 

This was the day anticipated for a great rejoicing in the 
land. Every thing pointed towards it. The nation's struggle 
was well nigh ended. The soil had been fully saturated 
with human blood. The earth had been upturned enough 
for human graves. The costly sacrifice of life was nearly 
finished. Widowed wives and orphaned children were to 
be multiplied no more. The thunders of artillery were no 
longer to shake the land. The weary marchings, the assaults 
and charges, the fearful carnage of the battle-field, the groans 
of the wounded, the convulsions of the dying, the anxious 
fears of those whose loved ones were in the strife of battle, 
the funereal gloom that lay like a pall over the land — these 
were all so nearly overpast, that men began to breathe 
freeby, in the long-deferred hope that Peace was not a great 
ways off. 

But a few days ago we spread forth our banners to the 
breeze, that the sun might smile on the stars; we poured 
forth salvos of artillery ; our night we turned into day, by 
making our dwellings radiant with other light than that the 



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sun gave ; music and speech were heard in our public places ; 
friends grasped the hands of friends, — and all were friends, 
though they had never met before ; — never was there a 
better augury for a day of Thanksgiving and Praise, than 
this was to have been, so far as man could judge. But man 
is as short-sighted as the mole that burrows beneath the 
earth. " He knows not what a day may bring forth." But 
last Friday night we all went to our rest in peace, looking 
for a happy dawn to renew our joy and prepare for the 
jubilee so near at hand. But while we calmly slept, there 
were messages on the wire of hot woe, that well might melt 
the iron strands — that the tidings should never reach the 
ears of the people. But come they did ; and when the next 
day's sun arose, and our citizens were again rejoicing in 
hope, it was like an electric bolt from Heaven — the tidings 
that had travelled through the night — that the Head of this 
great Nation was stricken down into the ceaseless silence of 
death, — stricken down just as his heart was most elate with 
joy; — stricken down just as he was " devising those liberal 
things" which his great and loving heart exulted in; — 
stricken down just at the moment when he was ready for 
his crowning work of readjusting all the disturbed elements 
of the land, so that all parts thereof, North and South, East 
and West, might be reconsolidated into an Union that could 
never again be severed, and upon principles so generous, so 
pure, so righteous, that every patriot would be glad, and 
all the land should shout for joy ; — stricken down just as 
he had conquered all prejudices, secured all confidence, and 
stood, as he deserved to stand, the foremost man before all 
the nation — the foremost man by the verdict of foreign 



jwwers, who tcere forced into the confession, against every 
wish of their heart, that for judgment, for sagacity, for 
comprehensiveness, the State-writings of Abraham Lincoln 
were models for any government, and of which any states- 
man might be proud. 

But how did he fall ? Ah ! there comes the bitterness of 
the woe. Had he been laid upon a bed of sickness, with 
fever raging through his veins ; had his great intellect been 
stilled by that fearful malady which overtakes a brain 
o'ertasked ; had all the skill of the medical art been used 
and failed ; had the storms of Heaven made the boisterous 
sea swallow down the ship as he went out to confer with his 
Generals on the matter of the war, just as the rival capital 
of the rebellious States was to be reduced to allegiance to 
the laws, or be destroyed from among the cities of the earth 
— then, though we should have said: "The ways of God 
are inscrutable, past finding out," yet we should have bowed 
the head in sorrow, and said, reverently : "It is the Lord, 
and though He slay, we will trust in Him." We were not 
permitted, in the hidden mystery of the wisdom of God, to 
enjoy even this poor consolation. 

The good Washington breathed out his life calmly 
in an honored retirement from the pressing cares of public 
duty, after he had conducted the nation safely through 
(amid appalling discouragements) the great war of our 
Revolution. 

The elder Adams died in a good old age, just fifty years 
after he had signed our Magna Charta, the Declaration that 
" these United States are free, sovereign and independent ;" 
died peacefully in the quiet of his home. 



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Jefferson departed peacefully in the land for which he 
had penned that noble instrument, which we have sealed a 
second time with the nation's blood. 

Madison died " as serene, philosophical, calm, in the last 
moments of his existence, as he had been in all the trying 
occasions of his life." 

James Monroe had no violence in his death. 

Harrison occupied the Presidential chair but a single 
month, and then passed away amid the consolations of 
Religion ; — said a passing word for his country, and laid 
down to die, contentedly. 

Jackson, the brave, the undaunted, " expired at his home 
with calmness, and expressed the highest confidence in a 
happy immortality, through the Redeemer." 

John Quincy Adams died suddenly but composedly in 
the very capitol, passing away, as many deem it a blessing 
to die, without the pains of sickness or the infirmities 
of age. 

James K. Polk died in his home after he had laid aside 
the responsibilities of office. 

Taylor said kind parting words to soothe the anguish 
of his friends. 

All other Presidents that departed this life died without 
violence ; but it was reserved for one whose name must 
necessarily outrank all but that of Washington; it was 
reserved for Abraham Lincoln — loved not less than any, 
honored not less, confided in not less, — to die by the 
accursed hand of assassination, with a suddenness so fearful 
that he could give no parting look, speak no parting word, 
hear not the wails of sorrow, feel not the hand of affection 



on his brow, hear not the prayer at his bedside, know not 
the friends that bended over him, and send upwards no 
prayer like that of the first Christian martyr : " Lord Jesus, 
receive my spirit." For he, Ave mourn to-day, was a martyr 
as much as ever Latimer and Ridley, Wickliff and Huss, were 
martyrs — a martyr in the cause of high-minded patriotism ; 
in the cause of human freedom ; a man, a magistrate as 
true to his country as is the needle to the pole. But still 
we say, " Thy will be done;" for the Lord has His own 
thoughts, His own ways, which are not as our ways, nor as 
our thoughts. 

Was it meant to nerve the Nation's heart to greater 
fortitude? Was it needed to show us how virulent the 
poison mixed in Rebellion's Circean cup ? Alas ! alas ! it 
savors but too much of that foul spirit which has kept the 
land in tumult for long and painful years. 

It goes back to the day when one who had once occupied 
the Presidential chair, and afterwards was known as " the 
old man eloquent," received from the South this graceful 
communication, " a lithograph portrait of himself, with the 
picturesque annotation of a rifle ball on the forehead, and 
a promise that such a remedy ' would stop his music.'" 

It goes back to the days when an honorable Judge of 
your own State was driven from the streets of a Southern 
city that had not chivalry enough to defend the weak, and 
in which it was averred — " they dared not be responsible 
for the protection of his life." 

It goes back to the day when a Massachusetts Senator, 
sitting at his desk in the chamber of the capitol, was felled 
to the floor, like an ox by a butcher's hand. 



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It reminds us of Kansas, filled with New England's men 
and women honoring that Border State, but ransacked and 
burned, and her brave citizens murdered, with a malignity 
and low grovelling cruelty such as we once supposed could 
be found only in the Pacific Isles when this century began. 

It reminds us of the glee with which a brave and fearless 
man, excited to unlawful acts by the manifold wrongs he 
suffered, was hunted down and captured like a wild beast, 
and then sacrificed with all the pomp and circumstance of 
war, as if in that execution of one poor freeman, they had 
destroyed the very life of freedom. 

It reminds us of the low stratagem of sending forth our 
diminutive fleet to every coast except our own, that the 
cunning and crafty ones might the more safely pillage cities 
and mints, forts and arsenals, and all the public property 
that lay within the reach of their pilfering hands. 

It reminds us of the gnashing of teeth when a brave 
officer, four years ago, transported his command from an 
insecure fort on the land to a safer one built up out of the 
depths of the sea, and named for one of the honored men in 
the war of the Revolution. 

It reminds us of four years of barbaric cruelty to captured 
prisoners of war, compelling them to herd in pens, without 
shelter from the sun at noon, or frost at night ; compelled 
to eat and to drink what the very swine in our streets would 
reject ; allowing them to die uncared for, as if they were 
brute beasts and not men ; bayoneting the wounded, and 
carving the very bones of our brave dead soldiers into rings 
and charnio, and boasting of all these things as if they were 
right and proper. 



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It reminds us of base incendiarism of public hotels, where 
a conflagration would destroy the lives of thousands of help- 
less women and children, mingling the ashes of mortality 
with the ashes and debris of wood and stone. 

It reminds us of large rewards offered to such as would 
bring, dead or alive, into their own possession, distinguished 
civilians and warriors, who were the more prominent sup- 
porters of the laws of the land they had so wickedly 
abjured. 

And more, surely, we need not say, to show how the 
spirit of foul rebellion will incite to deeds of such black 
atrocity as ally men to demons, making them infuriate with 
rage. And with all these facts, would it pass the bounds 
of Christian charity to suspect that behind the assassins 
who designed a wholesale murder of the most prominent 
and most important men of the land — President and Vice- 
President ; the Secretary of State and the Secretary of War ; 
the General of all our forces in the held or in the camp — 
does it pass the bounds of Christian charity to fear, at least, 
that behind the assassins were sustainers leagued together, 
perhaps by a vow, to wreak their hatred by the lowest 
meanness of which depravity is capable? 

While w r e bend over the grave waiting to receive all that 
is mortal of Abraham Lincoln, we cannot easily force these 
thoughts back from our mind. The question will come — 
how came the noble victim, the noblest victim of the land, 
so basely stricken down? Mere private revenge would 
hardly risk the danger of such a daring deed. Besides, 
what means that strange meeting of strange men, who deport 
themselves not as ordinary carousers, but who have rays- 



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terious whisperings, and join hands at parting, as if there 
were a secret plot, and a secret pledge, to do that which 
none besides themselves might know the secret of? With 
my hand upon my heart, I fear me much that, failing in 
resort to arms, failing in attempts to burn our cities to the 
ground, failing in all things, and desperate in defeat, the 
last resort is to murder, as best they can, all the leaders of 
the nation, to prepare the way for a new uprising of such as 
have been trained in a school where human life is little 
worth. If it be so — if they are given over to a mind so 
reprobate — we can only say, in this hour of the nation's 
sadness, that the conspirators, few or many, have slain their 
best friend ; and, moreover, that they have waked up a 
determination, that will never sleep, that our country's 
honor shall be sustained if it cost ten lives where we have 
given one, and all the treasure that the land can furnish. 

Over the now sacred remains of the dead, tens of thousands 
of hesitating patriots resolve that, under God, they will, not 
reveuge the fall, but will purify the land, maintain the 
supremacy of its laws, vindicate its honor, and make it what 
it can be made and will be made, the chiefest among the 
nations of the earth. That humbled flag on Sumter " stooped 
to conquer." It has risen again with a meaning and a glory 
and a moral power it never had before , and all its stars 
shall burn in brighter splendor, and new stars shall multiply, 
and it shall wave over us, the nation's emblem, as the 
Banner of the Cross waves over us, the emblem of the king- 
dom that is over all the kingdoms of the world. 

But it will not be by man's might or power. Have you 
not seen how God has taken the cause into His own hands ? 



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Has He not led us, by a way we knew not, through all the 
eventful struggle by which the nation is to have its new 
birth ? Nearly every great plan of our devising has failed ; 
nearly every great man Ave trusted in has fallen or retired. 
Our successive hopes, one after another, have perished. 
Our intended pacifications have never been effected. All 
things have disappointed us, even to the taking away our 
strong staff, that is now broken and lost ; and yet to-day 
the land is stronger, the resources are more ample, the 
finances are actually sounder, than when the war began. So 
that ill our great sorrow — with this our severest blow of all 
— with the loss that almost seems irreparable, we may 
still believe that the Lord hath a favor unto us — that He 
will be gracious unto our land — that when the Lord chastens 
it is in love ; that He will, in his own good time, turn 
our mourning into joy, as He has turned our joy into 
mourning ; and that after the grief of this calamity is over- 
past, we shall send forth the shout of victory, "of a people 
saved by the Lord, the shield of our help, and the sword of 
our excellency." 

But with all this glad hope and sure confidence for the 
future, we will not forget to weep with those who weep 
to-day, with an agony that no human sympathy can relieve. 
A widow mourns for one dearer than the apple of her eye. 
Children mourn for a fond and honored father, who had a 
child's heart for gentleness and simplicity, for one whose 
spirit was as playful as their own. Men grave in council, 
men of high trusts and weighty responsibilities are in tears, 
at this passing moment, Avhile they stand around the bier of 
the great departed. 



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The solemn sound of prayer ascends to call a blessing 
down upon that stricken wife — upon the fatherless — upon 
the associates of the illustrious dead, who had taken counsel 
together these many years ; to call a blessing down upon all 
the people of the land — a prayer that God will sanctify the 
nation's great sorrow to the nation's great good ; and that 
it may be established in true holiness and righteousness — 
such righteousness that war can never again prevail, as long 
as the two great oceans that bound it shall ebb and flow 
upon its coasts. That house of mourning is a solemn place, 
while we are gathered here. Beside the voice of supplica- 
tion, the low dirge reminds that Death is there ; and beside 
the dirge and prayer, and heavy sobs, and raining eyes, 
there is all the drapery of woe, the sable curtaining, the ivy 
wreaths, that show and teach that what is appointed unto 
all men " once to die," has come to pass for one loved and 
honored, and it is he who fell by foul murder's hand, 
raised at fouler Treason's instigation. Weep we then with 
those who weep. It is no shame that tears run to-day. It 
were a greater shame if the fountains were sealed, so that 
the streams could not flow, till the very eyes were dim. 

"These are gracious drops;" these our tears the best 
tribute we can pay to-day to the memory of the great, the 
good, the wise, the honest, the true, the tender-hearted, the 
forgiving, and the Christian magistrate that honored God, 
and sought his guidance for his life's control. 

My friends and neighbors, some of us have spanned o'er 
many years, and have known something of this nation's 
history, and have seen days of gloom, when fear prevailed 
more than hope, but none of us have ever seen a day of 



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deeper sadness than this. AVe shall not learn its lesson well 
unless the nation is humbled under the mighty hand of God. 
We must bow before the majesty of God, who casts down 
the high looks of the proud, that out of the dust of humility 
He may lift up the fallen into a new and stronger life. He 
disciplines nations as He disciplines men. If man must 
enter Heaven, through much tribulation, so must a people also. 
God scourgeth every one whom he receivcth. He smites 
that He may heal. He hath smitten us sorely, but He has 
not given us, as a people, over unto death, nor will He so 
long as we put our trust in Him. 

Blessed be the name of God, that he hath given us so 
much, and favored us so long before He took away the staff 
on which we, perhaps, leaned too confidingly. 

Turn we a moment from the dead to the living, clancinjr, 
as we turn our eyes, into that darkened room, where a 
sufferer lies, at whom Treason struck so audaciously. How 
nearly did the second man in power, of this great nation, 
fall under the same traitorous blow that laid the first in 
death. One could not suffice. Nay ! every day will reveal, 
we dare to prophesy, that scarcely one icas to be spared, of 
all the heads of the Departments of State — in civil, judicial, 
or military life. God heal those gaping wounds, that were 
meant to be as fatal as the lead that struck the Leader down. 
But there is another living, or, we may trust is living, who 
needs all the sympathies and all the prayers that heart and 
soul can give — the successor of him who is now being borne 
to the house appointed for all the living — one who, in the 
present crisis, succeeds as much to danger as to toil and 
honor ; — a man solemnly resolved to do his duty to his 



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country as faithfully as he has done it, and as fearlessly, 
too ; — a man who stands in his place to-day by the provi- 
dence of God, and not of his own seeking. God grant that 
" as his day is, so his strength may be." 

Be it ours less as patriots than as Christians to hold his 
arms up by our prayers, till the remembrance of Amalek be 
utterly put out from under Heaven — till Rebellion, which is 
as the sin of witchcraft — till Treason, which springs up from 
beneath — till Sedition and privy Conspiracy shall cease 
to exist, from the Lake to the Gulf, from the great sea 
eastward to the great sea westward, and this whole country 
be established in righteousness, a people fearing the Lord. 

A land in sable, and a land in tears ! The air rocked, 
over the whole country, with the mournful sound of tolling 
bells ! A land pale with indignation at the most atrocious 
crime that has ever yet been perpetrated within its bound- 
aries ! A land stirred to its soul's inmost centre, that it 
shall be free ! 

< ' The victory to-day turned into mourning ;" but so we 
are true to God, and listen to his instructive voice, echoed 
back from the grave of the great departed, ere long our 
mourning shall be turned back again into a subdued and 
holy joy ; tears wiped from every eye ; symbols of victory 
on every high hill, and every mast and every steeple. 
Thanksgiving and melody in every consecrated Temple, at 
every street corner, in every palace and every cabin of the 
land ; a land with none but free and freedmen ; a land that 
God shall greatly bless, if we put our trust in Him. 



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O, most mighty God, terrible in thy judgments, and won- 
derful in thy doings towards the children of men ; who, in 
thy heavy displeasure, didst suffer the life of the President 
of these United States to be taken away by the hands of 
cruel and bloody men ; we, Thy sinful creatures here assem- 
bled before Thee, do, in behalf of all the people of this land, 
humbly confess that they were the crying sins of this nation 
which brought down this heavy judgment upon us. 

But, O gracious God, when thou makest inquisition for 
blood, Lay not the guilt of this innocent blood, lay it not to 
the charge of the people of this land ; nor let it ever be 
required of us or our posterity. Be merciful, O Lord ; be 
merciful to Thy people whom Thou hast redeemed ; and be 
not angry with us forever, but pardon us for Thy toercies' 
sake, through the merits of Thy Son, Jesus Christ, our 
Lord. Amen. 



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NOTES TO PAGES SEVEN AND EIGHT. 



John Quincy Adams, while defending " the right of petition," and expos- 
ing the preponderance of the Slave interests over those of the North, frequently 
received threatening letters, the effect of which was to nerve him to a higher 
bravery. His lightning scathed remorselessly the vaunting pride of those who 
hoped to still the potency of his voice. 

Judge Hoar visited Charleston to defend a colored sailor who had been 
thrust into prison, with the prospect of being sold into irretrievable bondage. 
The judge was exposed to the danger of losing his life, and was rather hustled 
than conducted out of the city. 

Charles Sumner was writing at his desk, when but few were in the Senate 
Chamber, and Brooks, of the House of Representatives, from South Carolina, 
stole behind him stealthily and struck a murderous blow, the effects of which 
were so serious as to threaten life, or a deprivation of intellect worse than 
death. Happily, Sumner lives. Brooks died long ago. 

John Brown made an unwise but bold incursion into Harper's Ferry, creat- 
ing an alarm that was wholly unwarranted by the facts, and was hunted 
down by the Virginians with an earnestness far exceeding the importance of 
the case, and provoking the ill-feeling of many not by any means in sympathy 
with the raider. 

The seizure of mints, forts and arsenals, the Floyd diplomacy, the designed 
assassination of President Lincoln in 1861, and the subsequent acts of cruelty 
at Anderson, Belle Isle, and the Libby Prison, are familiar to all who have 
watched the progress of the war. 



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